Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Step down DC-DC voltage regulators are common components in modern electronic devices. The buck converter is a popular device for converting a higher voltage source to a lower voltage level that can be used by the electronics components in an electronic device. Typical input voltages may range from 4.6V to 16V, and typical output voltages may range from 0.8V to 5V. A buck converter comprises power stage and a feedback compensation network. The power stage generates a switched signal and typically includes an output filter to smooth out the output voltage. The feedback compensation network may regulate the output voltage by varying the duty cycle of the power stage.
The dynamic response of a voltage regulator informs the circuit designer how the circuit will behave. The dynamic response may be represented by the closed loop transfer function of the voltage regulator. The bandwidth, which is sometimes defined from DC to the cutoff frequency, tells how quickly the circuit will respond to changes in the output voltage during operation of the circuit. The DC open loop gain tells how accurate the circuit will be in compensating for changes in the output voltage; for example, whether the circuit will overshoot or undershoot, ringing, and so on. Acceptable performance of the circuit depends on being able to control or otherwise design for these parameters.